India Calling, by Anand Giridharadas

India is a country predicted to pass China in economic growth, even as 80 percent of its more than 1 billion people live in persistent and extreme poverty with incomes of less than $2 a day. An Indian American, Giridharadas weaves together the story of his grandparents, who were professionals in India; of his parents, who left India in the 1970s for the U.S.; and of himself, an American with a vague and mostly secondhand picture of India. Seeking to remedy this, in 2003 he moved to Bombay as a consultant and then began writing for the International Herald Trib­une. Poised between the past and the future, Giridharadas's observations re­move a layer or two of India's mystery, only to reveal more layers.